Thursday, January 15, 2015

No Disrespect to Catholics, but I Really Can’t Stand Pope Francis

On
January 9, just two days after the terrorist attack on French newspaper Charlie
Hebdo by Muslim extremists, I
blogged about the cartoons that inspired its targeting in the first place:

“I got to see the controversial cartoons Charlie Hebdo
published over the years, thus making itself a repeated and unrepentant target
for Muslim extremists. And I gotta tell you, they were needlessly offensive.

“There’s the fact that Muslims don’t believe the Prophet Muhammad
should be portrayed in artwork at all, so drawing cartoons of him in the first
place is considered disrespectful. Which Charlie Hebdo knew very well. But the
particular cartoons it drew?

“I guess I just don’t see the point in openly mocking people’s
religious beliefs. I mean, I have mine. And I genuinely believe that other
religions are wrong. But that doesn’t mean I should go around deliberately
offending them with no regard to their feelings.”

Then today, Pope Francis got onboard the same bandwagon. And, in
his typical style, he drove it right off the road straight for a worrisome
cliff. Because that’s what he does. With everything.

We shouldn’t ignore the poor… So let’s redistribute wealth!

We shouldn’t be judgmental… So let’s not call anyone’s opinion
wrong!

Free speech works best when tempered with respect… So disrespectful
forms of free speech should be banned!

“If my good friend Dr. Gasparri,” Francis opined, “says a curse
word against my mother, he can expect a punch. It’s normal. You cannot provoke.
You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of
others.”

Ummm… Actually, yeah. You can. It might not be advisable, and you
might suffer the justified or over-the-top consequences, but yeah, you really
can.

All Pope Francis had to do was switch one word around in that
little speech. Just one word and he would have it right! If he had only said “shouldn’t”
instead of “cannot,” I would support him in this. But nope, he had to take it
to an extreme.

Here’s the truth: Free speech should very rarely be banned by
religious or political authorities. That’s something each individual is
supposed to be limiting at a personal level, using our minds and morals to hold
us back from blurting out every offensive thing that pops into our heads.

So in other words, while I CAN say that Pope
Francis is screwed up six ways from Sunday… I probably SHOULDN’T. ‘Cause I’m
sure there’s a more respectful way of saying the same thing.